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Indian Cricket Tour 2004 - Top 10 incidents off the field - Tour Review

Well what a series it was in India.

To see Australia win in India for the first time in 35 years was an awesome experience. Marto, Clarkey, Dizzy, and Super Adam Gilchrist did the job for the Aussies, while The Fanatics did the job in the stands and off the field for Australia.

Despite, or maybe because of, the heat, the smells, the dodgy vindaloo's, the rickshaws, and the never ending crowds of people, 3 weeks in India, from Chennai, to Goa, to Nagpur, to Mumbai was sensational.

Here's my list of the top 10 incidents/events/antics/ that happened on tour.

10. 26 hour train ride from Goa to Nagpur

Due to the massive size of the Indian sub continent, and the fact we were trying to run a fairly tight budget, meant that we had to endure a couple of massive journeys on the "character filled" Indian train system.

One such journey was 26 wonderful hours from Goa to the 3rd Test venue in the backwater town of Nagpur. Sleeping conditions were tight, with 6 of us and our luggage crammed into a cabin the size of closet. The trains had "Indian style" toilets, which means no seat and no flush, which made for some nice aromas in the 40 degree heat! The food for the journey tasted like crap.

Every few minutes I'd spot cockroaches climbing across my mate Pete's face while he was asleep. But by far the most annoying thing about the Indian trains was the ever present Tea sellers, who, without fail, would wander past your bed just as you were about to nod off, and shout "Chai" (the Hindi word for tea) at the top off their voice. Our solution to avoid all of these quaint features of the Indian train system? Fanatics members Pistol, Jordy, Mitch, and myself popped a valium and slept for 12 hours, or in Jordy's case, 23 hours!!!

9. Raymond Trousers

During the 2nd Test match in Chennai, we were bombarded with ads after almost every over on the big screen of the scoreboard. After a while we noticed that 1 company in particular was getting a lot of airtime, and in fact seemed to be the only company sponsoring the cricket! The name of this company was the famous Raymond Trousers, whose catchy slogans include "Raymond - Trousers for the Complete Man", and "Raymond - A Trouser for every mood". The Fanatics became quite infatuated with the Raymond ads during boring periods of cricket, and they eventually led us to create banners promoting the benefits of Raymond trousers. Ledge was so impressed with the quality of Raymond trousers that he invested his hard earned cash into a couple of fetching canary yellow and hot pink Raymond safari suits!

8. Nagpur Red Light District

The obscure town of Nagpur was the venue for one of the Test matches. We had 7 nights in this place, and soon found that most Nagpurians are in bed by about 9pm so the nightlife was, shall we say, limited.

However we had heard that a red light district existed, which, needless to say, got us a little interested. After 2 weeks in India, most of the lads were as toey as a roman sandal. We asked a couple of rickshaw drivers to drop us in the middle of the Red Light district, however the place they dropped us at seemed to consist of a series of closed down shops and empty streets, with not a red light in sight, it wasn't exactly SoHo. However, due to our combined horniness, we weren't going to chuck in the towel yet.

So for the next hour or 2, onlookers witnessed the pathetic sight of 10 randy Australian males going in and out of every pub in the area asking if they had any naked ladies we could look at.

One publican gave us a disturbing little smile, he looked dodgy enough, but unfortunately he didn't have any strippers. So we eventually resorted to asking random blokes on the street where we could find girls, any girls at all, but apparently none of them are allowed out of the house after 9pm, so we trudged back to the hotel, cursing Nagpur's insipid lack of nudie bars.

7. Ledge gets kicked out

During another slow period of Aussie domination at the cricket, Ledge had the amusing idea to strip down to his gold "budgie smuggler" underwear, and hold up a sign for commentator Michael Slater saying "SLATS, YOU NEVER CALLED!" While this caused no end of amusement to us fellow Fanatics, the Indian security guards took offence to the sight of Ledge in all his glory, and promptly escorted him out of the stadium!

6. Fanatical Indian supporters

The Indian people we met were close to the friendliest people i've ever met in all my travels around the globe (yes, they were are friendlier than the French and English...) Wandering through the streets, it was very common for a random Indian to jump in front of me, grab my hand and say "Hi, where are you from?" "Are you Jason Gillespie?!" "Can you say hi to Ricky Ponting for me", "Can I have your turban?" etc etc.

In the large cities like Chennai and Mumbai, we could walk the streets relatively without incident, but in the small town of Nagpur, after we played a game of cricket in a local park, we got mobbed like something I've never seen before. A huge circle of little Indian's had gathered around the ground watching us play, which was fine, but after 5 minutes or so, every one of our fielders was being mobbed by a couple of hundred Indian's wanting autographs, photos, handshakes and ass grabs, and the game had to be abandoned.

Some of the girls got a bit concerned with the attention but I lapped it up, and signed Bob Neil's name on as many kids as I could.....

5. Dodgy food

Every traveller that goes to India for a few weeks generally expects to get sick from the food at some stage, otherwise you haven't really "done" India.

My own experience with Bombay Belly occurred early in the tour, on Day 1 of the Chennai Test. After eating a dodgy vindaloo for dinner the night before, I began to feel ordinary during the 1st session of play, and things went downhill from there. By the lunchbreak, while Pistol was knocking back an icy cold beer, I couldn't even stand up, sweat was pouring out of every pore in my body, and my hands were shaking uncontrollably.

Somehow I made it back to my seat for the next session, but soon after that, I farted, and almost followed through. I had to find a dunny, and fast. I ran into the toilets at the stadium, only to be greeted with a typical indian toilet, with no seat, no flush, and of course no dunny paper. This was going to be messy. However,I thought quickly, bought an ice cream and a packet of chips, and the wrappers from these 2 purchases saved the day!!! A week or so later, Pistol got much sicker than me after "Shommitting" for a few hours (you work it out), and ended up overnight in hospital on a drip, but he was back at the cricket the next day, nice work.

4. Slats and Gav

During our 5 day break in the beach resort town of Goa, we were fortunate to bump in to former Australian opening batsman Michael Slater who was in India as a commentator, and his mate Gav, a pommy bloke who was the Director of Cricket for the TV station covering the series. These 2 were top blokes and we had a couple of memorable nights on the booze with them. As a result of this connection, we received favourable TV coverage from Gav, which also helped us to be involved in one of the highlights of the tour, which you will read about later....

3. Goan police - very lenient...

On one of our days in Goa, a bunch of us decided to hire a sexy 6 seater Orange jeep to cruise around in and check out the beaches. The jeep was a bit of a tight squeeze with 6 of us, but later that night we managed to fit 17 people in it as we cruised the streets going from nightclub to nightclub!

14 Fanatics and 3 random English girls who jumped on board for the ride of their lives tore up the streets of Goa in the jeep, drinking, singing, waving to the locals and generally causing a ruckus. People were hanging on outside the jeep, lying across other people, sitting on laps, and sitting on the spare tyre. Our fun came to an end when we came across a police road block. We thought we were in all sorts of strife as 3 Indian policemen with batons looked us over for a good 5 minutes. Apparently they liked what they saw though, as we were waved through. Obviously they had never seen 17 drunken Aussie's and Poms driving round in a jeep, and didn't know what to
do with us!

The next night, a similar incident occurred, as Ledge, Pistol, Jordan, Mitch and myself were heading home on our scooters from Coco Cabana's nightclub at 7am after a particularly large night. We were pulled over by a couple of cops, and feared the worst as they asked for our drivers licences. They shined a torch in our eyes, asked if we had taken any drugs ("No officer"), and one of them asked if he could have my turban!" They didn't seem bothered by the 20 beers we had consumed, and sent us on our merry way without a criminal record, which is always a good way to end a night.

2. Bollywood babes

The final stop on our tour was Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, the home of the Bollywood film industry, which is bigger than the rest of the world's combined.

Ledge had thoughtfully arranged a tour of one of the film studios for us on a day before the cricket, and we were all giddy with excitement as we made our way out to the studios. Unfortunately upon arrival we were informed that not much filming was going on today, but we could feel free to wander around and have a look at the film sets.

Not impressed with this offer, we demanded to see some ladies, but were told the main female lead star wasn't filming today. We were becoming quite despondent (well, the blokes were) until we noticed a rather interesting caravan. Every 5 minutes a bikini clad Indian babe would sneak out of this caravan and wander over to a large palace like building. After about 20 ladies had left the caravan, we were salivating, and politely enquired if we could see what was going on inside the building. "Sure you can" was the reply, "But those girls aren't actresses, they are just recording a video clip for a dance song."

HELLO BOYS! We needed no further encouragement, and for the next half an hour proceeded to annoy the hell out of the sexy ladies by trying to chat them up and posing for photos with them. I thought I was going well with one of them, until she pointed to the red dot on her head which signified she was married...oh well.

1. Deano - you say it best, when you say nothing at all

Most of our time at the cricket was spent not watching every ball religiously, but working out new and improved ways to get our ugly mugs on TV so you desperate punters back home could see what your idiot mates get up to as they gallavant around the globe.

After our earlier introduction to Slats and Gav, they invited us to their hotel in Nagpur one night to have a few beers. During the evening we also met Slater's fellow commentator, former Aussie batsman Dean Jones, who once scored 210 in Madras back in 1986 and had to go to hospital after batting, as he likes to inform everyone, constantly.

Deano was a top bloke, but he liked to be the centre of attention. He spent a good hour or 2 regaling us with boring anecdotes about tales of what he and his teammates got up to in the 80's. We'd heard all the stories before, but let him carry on regardless.

Gav and Slats then called us over to discuss a banner we could use to heckle Deano, their suggestion was something like "Deano, just shut up". However the Fanatics put their heads together, and came up with the immortal line from the Ronan Keating song "Deano, you say it best, when you say nothing at all". Slats and Gav laughed their arse off, said they would get it on TV the next day, so we went off and got our banner made up at the Indian signwriter down the road.

When the next day's play came around, we thought we would elaborate a bit, and actually sing the whole chorus of the song for Deano. Gav timed it so his cameraman was up in our stand just as it was prime time back in Australia to maximise the audience, and as the cameraman gave the signal, we belted out, in our best singing voice:

Ledge Intro - "This one goes out to you Deano..."

All Fanatics -

"Deano, the smile on your face, lets me know that you need me, the truth in your heart saying you'll never leave me, the touch of your hand says you'll catch me, whenever I fall."

"Deano, you say it best (Lady Fanatics - "say it best, say it best"), when you say nothing at all......."

The cameras kept rolling for a few more seconds and we all clambered in front of the camera to get our faces on TV, waving and carrying on and blowing kisses etc. We saw it on TV later and it looked pretty funny, got a good reaction from all the commentators, although I think Deano was a bit emotionally hurt!

And there you go, in our small, shallow little lives, that was the highlight of 3 weeks in India!!!!
Tue 03/05/2005 Daniel Orken 146 views

2 Comments about this article

  • awesome

    Posted by Kirti Mishra Thu May 12, 2005 02:54am AEST
  • Top report Orks Pedro

    Posted by Peter Taylor Thu May 26, 2005 09:36pm AEST

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